Amy Grant
Amy Lee Grant ( born November 25, 1960 in Augusta, Georgia, USA) is an American singer and songwriter. She was initially very successful particularly in the area of Christian pop music and is known as one of the first Contemporary Christian music artist, who has made the leap into the secular or mainstream popular music market. She has not won six Grammys and 22 Dove Awards and was accepted in 2003 into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame Gospel Music Association. So far they can take six gold albums (each over 500,000 copies sold) and seven platinum albums (each over 1 million copies sold), one of them five times platinum, a triple and a double platinum, show.
Success story
At 15, Amy Grant was signed to a Christian record company, and two years later released her first, self-titled album, which was also composed mainly of her. This evolved in the former Christian music market quickly become a real blockbuster. She has published several more albums while she studied at Vanderbilt University in Nashville before they eintauschte their college career for one in the music industry. In 1982 the album Age to Age, which received much attention from the critics and finally as the first disk of a Christian artist over a million sold times.
Hardly had Grant established itself as the "Queen of Christian Pop ", she began to change direction a little to reach a larger audience. An indirect goal was certainly to be successful as the first Christian singer and songwriter in both genres. In 1985, she surprised her fans with the album Unguarded, on the one hand by the very popular music that is not from other pop acts of the time differed, and on the other by the cover picture on this album, which in Amy Grant in four different variants a leopard jacket shows. The first single from the album Unguarded Find a Way became the first Christian song that made it into the Billboard Top 40 list. The following year, Amy Grant scored her first Billboard number - one hit with The Next Time I Fall, a duet with Peter Cetera, the singer of the band Chicago.
The plate Lead Me On from 1988, produced in considerable tension in her marriage to Gary Chapman and mother after she was first, is considered by many critics as her strongest album, both because of the texts as well as because of the music. This album contains a number of songs, the "Christian" are not obvious. The song Saved by Love was a minor hit on the then newly emerging Adult Contemporary radio format.
When Heart in Motion was released in the spring of 1991, many fans were once again shocked and outraged that this album largely refrained from explicitly Christian texts and was clearly aimed at a mainstream pop audience. The piece Baby Baby, written for Grant's eldest daughter Millie could hold for three weeks at the top of the American charts. It became their biggest hit and established her and her name permanently in the world of music for the masses. Four more singles from this album reached the Top 20 on the U.S. charts. Heart in Motion is her best-selling album with over 5 million copies. Even in the German charts to baby baby several weeks could keep in the top ten.
House of Love continued the success story in the same way. In 1997, Amy Grant brought Behind the Eyes on the other hand a plate with a much darker mood out. Soon after it was announced that Grant's marriage was on the brink of. It was followed by the separation by Gary Chapman and later divorce. Many fans and Christian radio formats distanced themselves from it, which still came to a head when she soon after married the country singer Vince Gill.
Although Amy Grant in the following years still produced records and has released an album every year since 2002, her focus seems clearly away from a glossy career to a more related to the family life to have developed. Their latest album Rock of Ages ... Hymns & Faith, the sequel to the 2002 Gold album released Legacy ... Hymns & Faith, is a collection of Grant's favorite hymns, the musically by Americana, folk, country and blues influences is characterized. From September 2005 moderated Amy Grant reality show Three Wishes on the American NBC network in which three people, a heart's desire was fulfilled. Before the end of the year, NBC 's serial.
In April 2006 there were shots for a Live-CD/-DVD in Fort Worth, TX, instead. Amy was there at the time their first paid gig. The recordings were released on 26 September 2006 under the name Time Again.
In a press release dated 27 April 2007, the message is published that Grant their previous label Word Records, in which she was under contract 30 years, is leaving and a worldwide record deal has the complete EMI Label Sparrow Records, of their complete albums so far, for which the singer herself owns the rights, and future albums contains.
On 16th October 2007 an autobiographical book was published under the title Mosaic: Pieces of My Life so Far in Waterbrook Press publisher. Also in October, came out another Greatest Hits album, which represented the first project of the new EMI CMG cooperation.
In 2008, their record company EMI CMG released a commemorative edition of their highly acclaimed album Lead Me On featuring live recordings of that tour and re-recorded versions of some songs.
Grant is currently working on a new album. Maybe some of the new songs will be posted in advance on EPs and offered for download. Two new songs ( Unafraid and She Colors My Day ) was released on the EP She Colors My Day. All proceeds from the sale of the song She Colors My Day go 100 percent to the Women's Cancer Research Fund of the Entertainment Industry Foundation.
Amy Grant is a long-standing member of the Gospel Music Association ( GMA), which gives the annual Dove Awards and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame operates.
Discography
Studio albums
Other Publications:
Compilations
Other Publications:
- 2002: Her Greatest Inspirational Songs
- 2005: My Best Christmas
Live albums
Other Publications: